METEYARD

Eliza Meteyard had completed her major work, the two volume 'Life of Josiah Wedgewood', in 1866, a couple of years before this letter. She was, by that date, already established as a popular and successful novelist and frequent contributor to journals, such as Dickens's 'Household Words'. In the years that followed, she published a series of books for children but she was in declining health and her last years were spent in receipt of a Civil List pension, which had been the subject of a much publicised campaign by Samuel Smiles and others. She brought forward proposals for female education, and was active in the Whittington Club - a social and debating club that uniquely gave full membership to lower-middle-class women of learning. For Howitt's Journal, started by William Howitt and Mary Howitt, Meteyard wrote fiction highlighting small-scale social reform. Her view of prostitution was based on research in police and prison reports. The recipient is the sociable and intellectual Lady Elizabeth Drysdale (1787-1887). The “Dr Lane” mentioned later in the letter is her son-in-law Dr Edward Wickstead Lane (1822-1891), who ran a health facility, Moor Park, which Charles Darwin attended multiple times, and which Lady Drysdale played a role in managing. The person referred to as Mrs Lane is Mary Lane, who was the wife of Dr Lane and the daughter of Lady Drysdale. While at Moor Park on 25th June 1857, Darwin wrote fellow scientist and close friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, relaying that “Dr. Lane and wife, and mother-in-law, Lady Drysdale, are some of the nicest people I have ever met” (Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887), volume 1, page 460).